Basically the latest tests have shown thrust in the same direction even when they flipped the drive around, leading to the belief measurements of thrust are related to the orientation to the earths magnetic field and aren't being produced by the drive at all. I should ad that the rig they did this in was pretty complex, not only did it have gimbals to move the drive while under vacuum, they then physically flipped the drive on the platform and did all the tests again.

Good to hear. I've suspected this for a while. You can generate (neglgible) thrust in orbit just by carrying along a magnet, after all. Though I'm uncertain what the mechanism is here, since their testbed is not moving relative to earth's magnetic field.

From what I understand the measured thrust was so small that they think even with shielding that it's being induced in the systems wiring and equipment by the magnetic field.
Which also doesn't look good for the drive even if it works, that it produces so little thrust that induced currents in shielded equipment could still produce enough noise to eliminate any measured thrust.

It's 14.46 billion years old and the universe is a mere 13.799 billion years old.

Apparently these ages are not a problem because of the errors in the estimates: 14.46 ± 0.8 billion years vs 13.799 ± 0.021 billion years. Turns out we need most of that 0.8 billion years error shift in order to stay consistent.

It's 14.46 billion years old and the universe is a mere 13.799 billion years old.

Apparently these ages are not a problem because of the errors in the estimates: 14.46 ± 0.8 billion years vs 13.799 ± 0.021 billion years. Turns out we need most of that 0.8 billion years error shift in order to stay consistent.

This a really good lesson in why we should only ever quote our measurements with error bars!

__________________The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. -Eugene Wigner

When the Far Side came out in 1982, paleontologists realised they'd never actually named that part of a stegosaurus and began using the term informally. And now, 36 years later, if you type "Thagomizer" into a search engine... pic.twitter.com/pMDYoOrT8d

This picture has been circulated by many in the last week. But holy s***. My PhD was related to adaptive optics and I've worked on several adaptive optics projects in my career - the advances in ground-based telescope performance thanks to AO are phenomenal. https://t.co/itNhlUrbZZ